Eco Shop Common

Sustainable shopping at this BACC boutique

It is known that humans are the real threat to this world, and all life on earth, but at the same time some people are also trying to protect the environment and preserve the planet for future—even if it’s just with just little things.

Inspired by the 2006 film An Inconvenient Truth, which documents the effects of global warming and the environmental movements trying to stop it, Pipat (Top) Apiruktanakorn decided to start his own green business, together with his wife and co-founder Siraphun (Noon) Wattanajinda. The result was Eco Shop, a retail outlet where Top could make his own products and provide a space for eco-design and award-winning products to be sold.

Founded in 2009, this first flagship store was located at Siam Square but later moved to it’s more recent home on the first floor of the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre (BACC). It has since been renamed Eco Shop common, but it remains a meeting place for fellow creative people from all over. The store is now not only a home for eco-friendly products, but also an eco-design and knowledge center for students, or people in general, who are keen to learn and understand about eco-products and the environment.

Creative eco products available here vary widely—from bags, pillows, yarn, and lamps, to dried strawberries. Each product has its own story, which is often worth more than the product itself. The owner’s original brand O, for example, uses the LCA (or Life-cycle assessment) methodology, which evaluates the entire process of production from the extraction of the raw materials to their final disposal. The products from O feature multipurpose leather straps, rear reflectors for bicycles, and bags from organic plant material.

Foremost among the best-selling brands in the store is the environmental design label Rubber Killer, which uses inner tubes from all types of vehicles—bicycles, trucks, and tractors—and combines them with some inventive ideas to create useful products such as messenger bags, tote bags, and wallets. Other cool non-polluting products include Mazmoizelle’s backpack, made from cork sheets from oak trees, recyclable pencil caps from Gray Ray, and handicraft reused paper bead jewelry from Basic Teeory.

Eco Shop Common is also offering beauty products that use natural and organic ingredients, such as the very popular herbal liquid balm (for inhaling and applying) made by Herbiness, which gives off the refreshing scent of Thai aromatic herbs. There’s also a body scrub by Softcream made from sugar and apricot—natural exfoliators that give skin a radiant, healthy, and silky smooth appearance—and to keep lips nourished Pumi Pure’s organic lipstick, made from eco-certified organic ingredients. All items from the store can be changed within 7 days if there are any problems.

Eco Shop Common is basically an environmentally friendly boutique where shoppers who want to make a change can find a small but varied selection of truly “green” products for sale. It’s a distribution channel, as well as a place that provides useful information related to environmental issues and eco designs. By Pongphop Songsiriarcha